Here we provide background information about the Festival itself and about its island setting. The Festival is an ideal time to visit Orkney, to see more of the islands and their wealth of history, archaeology and natural beauty. The Festival programme includes outings with expert guidance, talks with new insights, and an opportunity to meet many people, local and visiting. There are also opportunities to sample Orkney food and drink in what is overall a true Festival atmosphere.

FRONTIERS magazine
The new online magazine Frontiers
is now available. It is aimed to be
a magazine in its own right,
highlighting stories about science
and people, with a wide range of
contributors and a high
quality of design.

You can get more information about the Festival in a variety of ways, and you can also contact us direct.

From childhood tinkering to gravitational waves

Had Prof. Ron Drever lived just a few more months this year, he would almost certainly have been awarded a share of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, for his part in one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, the discovery of gravitational waves. In this year’s Orkney International Science Festival, his brother Ian looked back affectionately to their childhood in Bishopton,

Renfrewshire, where their father was a doctor, and how Ron Drever was from an early age always making things; and how they used to do so much together. Later, as a student at the University of Glasgow, Ron Drever tested one aspect of Einstein’s theory in an experiment studying the nuclear properties of lithium through changing space directions – in their back garden, with equipment he built himself and car batteries from the family garage.